Page 102 of House of Crimson Hearts
After a few minutes, the door cracks and tinkles as Eleanor opens it. Her overall is gone, revealing trousers and a light linen shirt.
“Oh,” I say, “You look positively radiant.”
“Thank you,” she says, smiling. “I persuaded him that you’d gone and he must have missed you leaving the shop.”
“Thank you,” I say, leaning back against the shop wall once again.
“That relieved?”
“You can’t imagine. He was a pompous fart, it was tiresome to say the least. Oh, watch out—” I say but the shop door swings shut.
“No matter,” she says, glancing over her shoulder. “I’m taking my lunch break. Thought I’d keep you company seeing as your mother expects you to be out of the house for the afternoon.”
“Don’t you have customers to attend to?”
“No clients booked in this afternoon. I’ll only be missing the odd walk-in. I have a suspicion this will be much more fun.”
Heat climbs my cheeks. “Well. I… I have this picnic. Perhaps we could walk along the river?”
“I’d be delighted.”
And so we take a stroll beside the canals, until the canals turn into locks that turn into rivers, and suddenly we’ve walked three miles out of the centre of the city and haven’t stopped talking the entire way.
“Here,” Eleanor says. “This is my favourite spot.”
We’re in a little field with summer daisies and buttercups, a fallow field untended by the local farmers.
“Shall we sit?” she says.
I pull the picnic blanket out of the basket and lay it out flat. She helps straighten it while I arrange the food: sandwiches and some crinkled, crispy potatoes, cooked sausage and meats, and some wine.
She reaches for the sausage at the same time I do, our fingers brush.
“Oh, beg your pardon,” I say, frustrated that every time she nears me, I erupt in a flush of blotchy skin.
“You’re fine,” she smiles. “It’s not the first time our hands touched today.” Her smile is so warm it reaches her eyes and melts the deep ocean blue into crystal waters and beaches. Gods, I want to swim in them. Swim in her.
I shake the feeling off. It’s a silly childish notion. I’m not like her. I can’t justbewith another woman. Mother would disown me. It’s not the done thing.
“Where did you go?” she says, her fingers find my chin and pull it up so I’m looking at her. But whatever she sees makes her let go suddenly.
“Nothing. Sorry. How rude of me,” I say.
“Tell me what’s wrong. If we’re to befriends, we should be open with one another,” Eleanor says. And the way she emphasises the word friend makes bile claw up my throat.
I stare at the river, the grass, the daisies, anywhere but at her. “I was thinking about how free you are. To live and love whoever you like, however you like. That’s something I’d rather like.”
“Perhaps it’s not so far out of the realm of possibility.”
I shake my head, “I don’t think so.”
“Come on, Cordelia. It’s not like you come from the St Clair family.”
I look away. Her words sting like blades to my heart. Because, of course, that’s exactly the family I am from. One of two families that run this city. One of two families that demand a pure line, that demands heirs.
“Actually…” I start.
“Nooo,” she says, her eyes wide.
